As Andrew rightly points out, these are more than just speakers since there is some rather expensive electronics involved and the 'under $4K' price tag is certainly not unreasonable...(I don't know if real wood finish is standard or not). I do, in fact, understand where JBall is coming from, most higher end driver manufacturers do have diecast baskets vs stamped, which is less expensive to manufacture. Whether there's any difference sound-wise between a quality stamped basket vs die-cast, I couldn't say having not compared two similar products directly, but I would imagine a thin gauge basket would no doubt cause some problems. I've seen a few cast-plastic baskets on some drivers as well, not sure of the manufacturer however. Anyway, for Axiom to make a cast basket on a more limited series of speakers would definitely push the price up some and if it weren't reflected in a better quality sounding product, I doubt they would add that cost to the project.

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